Central Birmingham Car Trips Down by a Third

The number of people entering Birmingham city centre by car in the morning peak has fallen by 32% since 1995 according to the latest monitoring data.

Whereas 62,122 people crossed the ring road inbound by car, van and goods vehicle during the morning peak (07.30-09.30) in 1995, the figure had dropped to 42,372 by 2007. The fall appears to be the result of both fewer people overall entering the city centre and a rise in public transport use, particularly rail.

Chris Haynes, Birmingham’s head of transportation strategy, said any attempt to attribute the decline in car trips was a bit of a “guesstimate” but he identified three factors: the success of rail and particularly park-and-ride; the decline in manufacturing jobs within the ring road; and the recent increase in the city centre’s residential population. He added that 24-hour counts showed a fall in road traffic throughout the day. The pattern in Birmingham was not that dissimilar to other core cities, he added.

The overall number of people entering central Birmingham has fallen from 107,435 in 1995 to 97,192 in 2007. Public transport users have risen from 45,313 to 54,820 and, as a percentage share, public transport now accounts for 56.4% of all trips compared with 42% in 1995.

Rail use has jumped from 13,619 to 22,967; bus use has fallen from 31,694 to 30,268. Midland Metro, which opened in 1999, carried 1,585 in-bound passengers in 2007.

Data from Centro shows that the public transport mode share in other West Midland conurbation towns is much lower than Birmingham: West Bromwich (34.7%), Walsall (34.2%), Wolverhampton (29.5%), Coventry (22.6%), Sutton Coldfield (20.5%), Solihull (19.6%), Dudley (14.4%), Brierley Hill (12.1%).

Overall, Centro reports that the West Midlands has overtaken Tyne and Wear as the conurbation having the highest bus use per head of population. A total of 325.4 million trips were made by bus in 2007/08, little changed from 2006/07.

Centro says this equates to 12.4 million trips per 100,000 population, compared with 12.3 million in Tyne and Wear, 10.9 million on Merseyside, 9 million in West Yorkshire, and 8.8 million in Greater Manchester and South Yorkshire.

Rail patronage across the conurbation has grown by 43% in the last decade. Use of Midland Metro rose last year from 4.9 million passengers to 5 million.

Local Transport Today: Ctl Birmingham car trips down by a third